


The Uncontrolled Descent

by paperowl



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Autistic Sherlock Holmes, Character Study, Drug Addiction, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27201350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperowl/pseuds/paperowl
Summary: Scientifically speaking, addiction is a brain disease
Kudos: 15





	The Uncontrolled Descent

**Author's Note:**

> I am an idiot who, upset that I cannot join the fandom proper until I finish the show, just spent a day on writing a fic instead of watching the show. Oh well, the muse leads and I follow.
> 
> Despite being set pre-canon, this fic needs at least knowledge of season one, but technically spoils small stuff up until the end of season four, in case anyone cares. It's rated teen, because of a lack of anything explicit, excepting the drugs, if you feel the rating should be upped, please let me know.

i.  
Sherlock is an addict. 

Scientifically speaking, addiction is a brain disease. The drugs have altered his brain and now his ability to refuse them is almost non-existent. He thinks the cocaine helps him solve cases, but he also knows that that is a flawed thought. However, Irene is dead and he has to find her killer. So the fallibility of his perception of drugs can wait to be examined at a later date. There are more important things to deal with.

He knows, in theory, that self-medication is not the solution. He also couldn’t care less. Irene was The Woman, the person who understood him most in the world, she was one of a kind and he can’t find anyone who compares. His entire life has been a balancing act between who he is and what is acceptable. He’s learned to fit in as best he can, but with Irene he needn’t try, she didn’t care and in fact, she liked him more for it. He can’t bear to think of a world without her. She was a light he didn’t know he needed, and now that she’s gone the world is bleak.

He solves fifteen cases in two days and he cries himself to sleep. He never did get to see that Irene Adler original, he wonders what happened to it. One day he breaks into her apartment and tears it apart looking for any piece of her that he’d missed before, he doesn’t find anything. He stares at where the pool of blood was as time unravels like yarn from a spool.

  
  
  


ii.  
Sherlock likes being an addict.

He gets high and searches for oblivion. He manages to keep it together, for now. The heroin gets his mind to shut up and quiets all of his senses, the cocaine gives him a path to clear deduction without all of the extra distractions. That is until they fog everything up, but Sherlock ignores it and works on. On a good day, he won’t hurt as much, on a bad one pain is all he can feel. He’s dependent now, but he doesn’t mind, it’s the only constant he has left. 

Sherlock is, and always will be, a man of movement, unable to keep still. He bounces on his feet, twiddles his fingers, paces back and forth following his thoughts, and is always on the search for more. More information, more cases, more work, more quiet, more calm, more drugs. M has taken more victims and Sherlock doesn't sleep for several weeks. Then the heroin calms the buzzing in his brain and Sherlock doesn’t feel the need to move anymore. It’s a strange thing, and when he’s coherent he makes note of it.

He can tell he’s slipping, and now so can Scotland Yard thanks to their dipping clearance rates. He knows he’s screwed up some cases with sloppy deductions, but he doesn’t have the wherewithal to stop. It is at this point, in his alert moments, that he wonders where the descent ends and finds he doesn’t mind even the worst of outcomes. It should worry him, but it doesn’t. M must be found at any cost, he thinks, as the case grows colder. He has to shake himself awake and he knows his speech is slurred. No one says anything, they should.

  
  
  


iii.  
Sherlock wants to be an addict.

Kathryn Drummond will say she knew this would happen, Moriarty will say she didn’t. Sherlock believes this wasn’t predictable, or he does until he learns about his mother years later. Irregardless of predictability, he is at rock bottom. Some days he can’t even remember who Irene is. He stops making sense, sometimes even to himself. He doesn’t have coherent moments anymore, he needs the drugs too often. They stopped helping his detective work months ago but he doesn’t know that, not yet.

He leaves London for New York. Scotland Yard won’t let him work any cases and he needs to get out and away. Doing anything but get high is impossible now, or it seems impossible. He still works cases, but none of his deductions connect and he wonders later if he was actually working cases at all. He blacks out for longer and longer periods of time, not that he notices how long. The gaps should scare him -he prides himself on his excellent memory - and yet they don’t.

Time no longer exists and the world around him flows like honey. There is nothing but the drugs now, they are the only thing keeping him from drowning. He increases the amount he takes every time and on some level, he hopes for an overdose. It’s a horrid, small part of him, but it’s there, and he finds he doesn’t care that it exists. He’s forced into rehab with no memory of what precipitated it. He doesn’t need it, he could quit alone. Or so he says.

  
  
  


iv.  
Sherlock hates being an addict.

He hates rehab. He hates the pathologizing and the sympathy. He hates the look people give him, he hates the support groups, he hates it all. The psychologists sit and throw out diagnoses and medication as if they could know what was happening inside his head, they can’t. It was all useless talk meant to do something. Sherlock never quite figured out what that something was, not that he particularly cared in the first place. His brain is unique, atypical, it is not meant to fit into a neat little label, even if someone else feels like it does. His thoughts are his own and no one else’s, and he does not enjoy the daily intrusions of privacy rehab requires.

He gets clean anyway, because what other choice is there? There is no way to get drugs in, and quite frankly, he doesn’t care to execute an escape plan (though he’s identified at least twenty-three). He talks to the groundskeeper, Edson, the only person who doesn’t want to try to figure out how his brain works and how to fix him. He breaks out early, he was supposed to leave in a few hours anyway, but he was bored and they needed to check their security. 

  
  
  


v.  
Sherlock is an addict.

He is and always will be. His entire life is a battle against relapse and he’s not sure he wants this, but he’s willing to try. There is value in having a clear mind, even if that mind never stops moving. He knows the anxiety is inevitable, how could it not be, it’s a side effect of who he is and what he can see. It’s still an unwelcome visitor in his head, he does his best to ignore it. Being clean is worth the cases, he decides, even if the time between cases hurts it’s still better than the heroin, at least for now.

  
  
  


vi.  
Sherlock is an addict, and Joan is a sober companion.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr as I fall into the Elementary fandom [papered-owl](https://papered-owl.tumblr.com/)


End file.
